The Astronomer
by anaplasia
Summary: He will tear down worlds. -Jim Moriarty, from the beginning to the end.


I

The universe started in a big bang almost 14 billion years ago, and that is how he enters this world, scattering light and sparks and heat in all directions.

II

He will remember very little of primary school. For him, it is far too simple, and the people there are even more so. His teacher remarks that he's a bright boy; he should try to socialise more (and he smiles, ironically, because what do teachers know about their pupils?).

The other boys laugh at him, call him a freak, and he laughs along with them because they have no idea of how right they are. There is one such boy called Carl Powers, and he is like Pluto; far from the light, a false planet.

It is only in the last year of primary school that rumours begin to drift down the corridors, rumours that he is something else, a prodigy, a meteor that could crash into a planet and wipe out an entire dynasty.

In time, he will tear down worlds.

III

It is in his father's library that he discovers who he is. An immense, cold room; dark and airless as space, but the only place in which he takes comfort. He remains there far into the night, his fingers tracing the pages of old, dusty volumes (the structure of the solar system, the weight of neutron stars). He reads, and thinks, in his own way, that he understands. The books do not explain far away phenomena. They explain him.

IV

At some point, his internal pressure becomes insufficient to resist his own gravity and he collapses in on himself. He absorbs all the light that hits him, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics. On some days, he lies on his bed, staring at the blank wall in front of him, and dreams of absorbing stars. He will leave no traces.

(It isn't his fault black holes need to feed to be beautiful).

He becomes aware that he has reached the point of no return. The event horizon, some call it. He does not tremble at the fact (he knows what they don't know - it is only from here that light on the other side of the horizon is not visible).

V

He burns hotter and brighter than the sun, and his network revolves around him like planets. One day he directs them to an old rivalry never forgotten. They pour the botulin into Powers' medicine, and afterwards he stands by and laughs while the boy flails around, screaming, in the water. Eventually, when the paralysis sets in, he picks up the shoes and slips them into a plastic bag. He feels no regret (people die all the time, what difference will one life make?)

It is shortly after this that his father kills himself, blowing his own brains out, and this triggers a solar eclipse and a series of flares. They are deadly, but temporary; and he recovers within a few weeks. (It isn't, after all, as though he has lost everything, and caring always was a weakness anyway.)

Stars burn brighter in the darkness.

VI

He is working undercover when he first meets her. She is a small, lonely satellite; he a massive, gravitationally bound system with a black hole at the centre. It is from her that he first hears of Sherlock Holmes.

"I can introduce him to you, if you'd like," she says as she leans across the café table, and he smiles and nods and wonders how close she can get to him without being sucked into the nothingness that is at his core.

(He'd open up to _her_, he thinks, if he got the chance).

A month later, Molly Hooper picks him up and drives him to the hospital. He listens absentmindedly to her as she greets the consulting detective, and can't help but grin at this man's complete lack of interest when she introduces him. Jim from IT, she says. (He laughs at the innocence in her voice; she has no clue).

He holds Sherlock's attention for all of three seconds, and can't help but feel a little disappointed when the consulting detective only notices what he is pretending to be. But he is not concerned. He still has plenty of time left, in which he will make Sherlock Holmes notice him, whatever it takes. Galaxies might consist of stars, stellar remnants, and interstellar medium of gas and dust, but they would not be complete without dark matter.

VII

He is not quite sure what to think about John Watson. It is strange, he observes, that this man is so close to the almost inhuman genius; and he places cameras in their flat and spies on their street. It does not take him long to notice the subtle glances that pass between this duo.

They are dependent on each other; and balance out better than interstellar medium and solar wind pressures in the heliopause (John, he realises, is the only way to get to the detective).

So when Sherlock asks him to come and play, he is ready. So are the snipers and explosives. He relishes the look of horror on Sherlock's face when he sees John; as though in that moment the genius is merely a region of space dominated by his Sun, a group of charged particles in the space surrounding the Solar System, blown into the interstellar medium by his solar wind.

He lets them get away, of course. (It isn't enough to kill Sherlock; he wants Sherlock to kill himself).

The termination shock, where the solar wind slows down to subsonic speed, is less hard to bear than he thought.

VIII

He lays low for the next few months, and thinks of supernovae. Because they are beautiful things, but they're deadly and they strip the life out of anything that comes too close to the explosion.

IX

Eventually he returns from the perpetual dark of space, and once again he and the detective begin to play a game of sorts (a sick, twisted game, but a game that everyone plays, to an extent).

He knows exactly how his story will end. How all of their stories end. But he isn't scared; and he doesn't clutch desperately to life the way that they do.

(_Staying alive, it's so boring, isn't it?_ _It's just staying_).

X

He wonders, vaguely, if he should be worried.

He's standing on the rooftop of the hospital where this game began, and the detective is with him (and he has never felt more alive, more calm). This is all he, all his life, has ever been about, really; leaving this world the way he has entered it. In a massive explosion.

Thoughts of supernovae fill his head. Those events that briefly outshine an entire galaxy, before fading from view, phenomena that radiate as much energy as the Sun is expected to emit over its entire life span.

He finds that he is talking to the consulting detective, one of the few people in his life who has ever interested him, but he can't hear a word he's saying. His hand is shaking Sherlock's. He cannot even fathom how much he owes this man (for Sherlock Holmes is only a man, really, not so much of a genius after all), but the only one who ever showed him just how to solve the final problem.

(Of course, he won't let Sherlock get away again. Supernovas are deadly as well as beautiful; they drive a shock wave into the surrounding interstellar medium and obliterate anything that gets near to their explosions).

_Thank you. Bless you._

There is no pain as the bullet tears into his head. Just a sudden release. His outer layers pulse out in waves (it is even better than he thought, fading from the world). He sees bright, gleaming stars in the darkness of space, and suddenly he knows that this was how the universe began, what always was and what will be. The stars are fading, now (but still there is no pain. Just peace). He watches as his thoughts slip away. Freed. Problems vapourised now.

He is infinite.


End file.
